/bin/true

Some interesting perspectives and commentary here.

I agree with Gruber that the “openness” argument with respect to the Apple iPad has about as much merit as it does applied to a modern motor vehicle. One is no longer able to pop the hood and tinker; there’s nothing left to tinker with. And automobiles are much more reliable, powerful, economical and efficient as a consequence.

I’ve spent the last ten years riding the only vehicle I own—a Yamaha RD350. It’s a two-stroke. It’s less efficient than most modern sedans. It smells and pollutes. It needs expert hands, love and care to fix (if you can find those hands). By necessity, I can tell what’s wrong with it by the way it moves and sounds. I can strip and rebuild it’s carburetors in 20 minutes. I could and have modified it to go faster, turn better and look the business. It’s “open” and it’s a giant pain in the ass.

I’ve used PCs for over 20 years. I’ve used DOS, OS/2, various versions and flavours of Windows, Linux and the BSDs. I can build a PC from scratch in 30 minutes, code if the situation is dire, remain on-call for tech support to friends and family and generally owe my gainful employment to the PC. Through the years my PCs have broken down, been upgraded, replaced, reformatted and tinkered with just for fun. My PCs are “open” and a giant pain in the ass.

These days, ET uses a MacBook, which she bought against my better judgement. My better judgement wasn’t. It has been a singularly prudent computer purchase. Three years, one dead hard disk and battery later, she still uses it every day. It’s rarely turned off or rebooted and has been around the country and halfway across the world with her more than once. Today, the home PC is in the best shape it’s ever been. Guess which one needs more tech support?

Nowadays, I commute on a tester Yamaha R15. It’s tiny, 4-stroke, fuel-injected, plastic, boy-racer red and has the old-school motorcycle cred of Lady Gaga. It’s also quick, reliable, safe, fun and frugal to the extent that I have money left over at the end of the month. I don’t want to give it back.

So I’m keeping my second iPhone and saving for the 3G iPad when it comes along. As applied to most people, complaints about it’s level of “openness” or lack thereof is just hypocrisy. We consume more than we create. Deal with it or learn to clean your own carbs.

You don’t have to have just one computer or just one motorcycle, but if I had to choose today, I’d probably choose to ride to work with a very tiny backpack for my lunch and iPad on a plastic rice-rocket.

So it appears that Airtel will take your money for a shiny new iPhone, but has absolutely zero support for it. God help you if you want to use a value-added service like (gasp) voicemail. I’ve been subscribed for a month and I only just got it working.

Here’s the thing: in Mumbai, the voicemail number is 555, except it isn’t, and most of Airtel doesn’t know this. After a number of complaints, a mysterious call from an Airtel employee told me to use 567 instead. This works. Still no idea how to set a custom greeting.

So you now know your voicemail number. Great! Except that your iPhone doesn’t. It still thinks it’s 555. You tell it otherwise by punching in a USSD code on your phone dialpad thus:

*5005*86*567# (press “call”)

Now your iPhone knows it’s own voicemail number. Brilliant. Almost.

Here’s the other thing: the iPhone doesn’t have settings for “call divert” like other phones. That is, there are no explicit settings for whether the call should go to voicemail if unanswered, busy or out of coverage. The iPhone manual is also vague about this. However, since voicemail is a network feature, it’s possible to set options using network USSD codes, and generic GSM ones at that! What I used:

Send to voicemail if unanswered: **61*567#

Send to voicemail if out of coverage: **62*567#

I didn’t use this one, but it’s useful because you can then send any call to voicemail by simply pressing the lock button twice (busy signal):

Send to voicemail if busy: **67*567#

There’s a whole bunch of options to these well, so I’ll just link to the sources:

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2007/09/voicemail-hack.html

http://www.theunwired.net/?item=how-to-diverting-voice-calls-by-using-ussd-codes

With no sign of Apple officially launching the 3GS here, one couldn’t be blamed for taking the plunge into the grey market. I did a little over a month ago and have had no problems. More recently, the iPhone snobs in the office managed to convince another colleague to buy one as well.

The good news is that factory-unlocked iPhones are now going for what hacktivated ones used to. The premium is so minimal that there’s really no reason to save the cash and go through the cat-and-mouse routine with pwnage, hacktivation et al. I can confirm that the phones work as expected and will explicitly state that they are unlocked, once reset and connected to iTunes. Using a Vodafone SIM (an official iPhone 3G carrier), the phone also supports internet tethering out of the box. Baseband and firmware is the latest available.

Brilliant stuff. Ten points for Indian grey market enterprise.

The view from my hospital room

Additionally, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve shamelessly abused that pun. In brief, the nagging problem that has bothered me for seven years or so was a tiny black gallstone. Tiny like a peppercorn. Big enough to be a problem. It’s gone, along with its home.

What has this taught me about my lifestyle? Not much, really. Shit happens even if it shouldn’t happen to you till you’re 80. It did teach me a bit about the people close to me — for whom I shall remain forever grateful and to whom I owe thanks.

In particular, for the indomitable ET, who has been by my side since I first went into the hospital circus at Divali. She handled the paperwork, the preemptive phonecalls to insurance, sleeping in the hospital room on an uncomfortable futon, standing guard while I needed help using the toilet. To say nothing of the incessant legwork and crosstown driving despite a daily work schedule. Oh, and shuttling between FOUR hospitals through her own ill health at that. If we worked together, she would be insufferably efficient and I would be murdered.

To mom for being there and keeping all the shit together across a sick mother and son, multitudes of doctors, appointments and uncertainty. To Usha for keeping the home fires burning and the depressed dog fed, even if it meant hand-feeding.

To Shahnaz and Ketan for greasing the wheels, to Drs Rahul Kalia and Tilak Das for putting up with long-distance hypochondria and poor two-stroke analogies. To Jeetu & family, Ajay and Adeet for making it, sometimes across continents. To my in-laws and extended family for making sure I felt like there was an army to back me up. ET’s uncle insists I live with him for a while so he can fatten me up.

To Hari for lending us his car which made our hospital trips infinitely more bearable. To my colleagues who picked up my slack and ensured things worked. To HR and the insurance company, who sometimes do not deserve the poor reputation they’ve earned. To the surgeon who treated us like family even though the connection is distant — you have the undying adulation of the mrs, for completely unrelated reasons.

To the wife that complains that I never blog about her. There aren’t enough clichés…

It seems convenient to admit it now that he’s gone, but I was a fan of Michael Jackson. The years between his Jheri curls and my bald spot were sufficient for me to grow up and he to grow really weird. Still, through the grunge years, the adult contemporary, the drum ‘n bass, MJ remained—consistently—MJ. Increasingly irrelevant, until now.

As hackneyed as it sounds, something else did die with Michael Jackson—the extended childhood of my generation. Owned Thriller? Check. Bad? Check. Moonwalker bootleg? Check. Dangerous came at a dangerous time for the grunge-leaning. From then on, it was all just too bizzarre.

For me—as I’m sure it does for others in their 30s—it feels like the end of an era. I prefer to remember Michael Jackson as he was in “Bad”. Now go find Moonwalker on the torrents.